


Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

by RedHairGreenStockings



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Deleted Scenes, F/M, First Time, Loss of Virginity, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:39:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHairGreenStockings/pseuds/RedHairGreenStockings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She walked up all four flights of stairs backwards, never letting go of his hand, never taking her eyes away from his face. But she was not staring. Her eyes were like James Darmody’s, deep and clear and perceptive, holding his half gaze. She balanced like a tightrope walker in her high heeled shoes and the other girls leading men up or down parted in her wake. It occurred to Richard that she must be very important, but then he realized perhaps they parted only because they saw him coming and were disturbed."</p>
<p>Set during "Home." Richard's "ticker tape parade</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns

_Set during "Home." Richard's first time._     

_She walked up all four flights of stairs backwards, never letting go of his hand, never taking her eyes away from his face. But she was not staring. Her eyes were like James Darmody’s, deep and clear and perceptive, holding his half gaze. She balanced like a tightrope walker in her high heeled shoes and the other girls leading men up or down parted in her wake._

It occurred to Richard that she must be very important, but then he realized perhaps they parted only because they saw him coming and were disturbed.

     When they reached the third flight, Odette cocked her head to the hall before continuing.

     “There’s gambling on the third,” she told him pleasantly, “You play the tables?”

     Richard shook his head, exhaling. Heat was beginning to build up under his mask. He told himself this was because he did not walk so much since his army days, ate less, slept still less than that, and not because with each step this was becoming more and more real. This girl was breaking through the haze of him, just as something in those blue eyes across the hospital room had.

     When they reached her room he wanted to disentangle their hands so he could step to the side and allow her in first, but she did not let go. Her fingers were dry and warm against his cold, sweat slick ones. Richard glanced around the room. Mauve colored walls, almost grayish in the frigid winter light from the windows, decorated above the silk-sheeted bed with pictures of film stars, animals, and expensive dresses. Richard realized, with shame, that he recognized some of the ads from his scrapbooking. The vanity mirror had a large, rippling crack in it like a spider. It was not very grand, but what could he compare it to? The rickety little house drowning in its green fields, the mud, the white hot blindness of the hospital as it blurred back into aching focus, and the cold bedsit he rented now with the window painted shut.

     “Why dontcha have a seat on the bed?” Odette turned and shut the door. “And we can get started.”

     Her voice had gone from bright and conversational to a husky murmur. It knocked the strength from him and made him sit more than anything else. The bed was the softest thing he’d ever felt. Odette turned on her heel and smiled. Richard wanted nothing more than a glass of water. He licked the side of his mouth like a dog and certainly felt like one. Odette sat next to him on the bed.

     “Why, baby, you’re tremblin’. What’s wrong—you nervous?”

     Richard nodded, struggling to meet her eyes.

     “How come?”

     Her voice cajoled him, kind and soft. It forced him to speak. Richard unlocked his jaw and grunted.

     “I don’t—That, mm, is I’ve. Never…I don’t  _know…_ how to…Hngh.”

     “Oh.” Odette nodded, smiling indulgently without even a pause. “Oh, I see.”

     Richard went crimson and dropped his eyes to the floor. Of course he knew, theoretically, what was involved, but eavesdropping on the older boys’ conversations in the tents in basic training had made him think that making a woman feel good was a complicated, almost mystical process. He was in no way equipped for this; he never had been.

     “’M sorry,” he mumbled.

 “What for?”

“For my face. And my voice and, hmm. Everything.” He glanced up again hurriedly. “Mm, you don’t have to. Do anything, hmm, to me, miss. We can just—Tch. Explain to Mr. Darmody…that…um…”

Her face, that same indulgent little smile on her painted lips, dried the words up. She waited until he had stopped his blathering, then was suddenly pushing herself closer to him before she draped her hand across his inner thigh. Richard convulsed. He was still recovering from the handshake earlier that afternoon, could still feel the ghost of her palm against his sleeve as she’d led him away. Odette tilted her head down until their eyes met, pulling his head back up with her glance.

“If I told you I’d seen worse I don’t think you’d believe me, would you?”

He didn’t really, but it was wrong to accuse a lady of not telling the truth. Besides which, there was something suddenly a little sad tugging at the edges of her voice and her smile, a trick of the light that brightened as soon as he noticed it. Richard shrugged.

“And no more a’ that ‘miss’ stuff,” she continued breezily. “It’s just Odette.”

He repeated it back to her, a smile now tugging at his lips even though he still thought he was ruining the music of it with his guttural speech.

“And you’re Richard.”

There was just the ghostly drop of a pause as she reached to remember his name and it was forgotten in an instant as his brain flooded with pleasure—a girl’s voice saying his name…Before this could properly register, Odette began to stroke the place on his trousers where her hand lay. Richard softly gasped.

“It’ll be all right, baby. I got enough experience for us both; all you have to do is enjoy yourself.” She kicked off her shoes, then reached around his shoulders with her free hand to help him out of his jacket. “Now, why don’t we get you a little more comfortable to start off?”

“Okay…”

When she hopped off the bed in her stocking feet it dawned on him how small she was. She got down on her knees at his feet and slipped off his shoes. Richard groaned quietly, taken to a memory of his mother’s hands unlacing his boots when he’d come in from shoveling snow once. The heat had sparked pain as his dead nerves came back to life. There was pain these days too in places where no scars showed, his back, his neck, his feet, his shoulders. Maybe it was the cold. Richard did his best to grip the present moment. She was a blessing even if he should not have been here. He wouldn’t let his stupid mind lose this. Odette sighed, rubbing the backs of his hands where they went through the strange, piano-like motions on his legs. He was trying to still the shakes, but his hands only stopped when they held a gun. James Darmody was watching his gun right now and the others were locked in his room; they were quite safe. But was he?

“Tell you what,” she whispered. He held onto the glittering flecks of gold in her eyes, unable to tell if they were blue or green. “You wanna help me undress?”

He swallowed hard. His tongue made a dry sucking noise that he knew she noticed. He nodded. He did want to. Odette rose to her feet like a flower growing and sat back on the bed and Richard rolled the yellow silk robe off her shoulders and pulled down the straps of her black under-thing, watching the veil of sheer fabric sliding down and revealing her breasts in full. He tried to avoid making contact with her skin, but the callouses on his fingertips still made goosflesh prickle across her nipple. Richard heard a noise squeeze its way out of him. She didn’t seem to notice. She lifted her legs into his lap, laying lengthwise across the sheets, taking his wrist and moving his hand to the belt of her garter. Richard couldn’t tear his eye away from the dark nest of curls between her thighs. He stared at it in wonder and fear for a few long moments before he realized hastily what she was asking of him.

“Sorry…” he mumbled, undoing the belts and rolling down her stockings. He moved as slowly as he could, still trying to avoid touching her or looking back into that most private place. This would be over soon; it had to be. She’d never really allow him to…

“Naw, it’s all right, baby.” There was a pause. Odette observed his progress with a knowing smile. “You ever see a naked girl before?”

“Only my sister.”

It was the first time he had physically given voice to Emma in…he can’t remember. She was constantly in his thoughts, but speaking of her shook him. Something on his face must have changed because Odette changes the subject.

“You have nice hands.”

Richard blushed.

“They’re not, mm, too rough. Are they?” he stuttered, rushing the words from where they caught in his throat. “Can’t seem to, hmm, get the. Farmboy. Out of them. Hmm.”

“Naw, don’t worry. They’d be good for playin’ piano.”

Richard smiled a little.

“I used to. Play. A bit, mm, when I was. Younger. But not now.”

Silence. Richard counted twenty beats of his racing heart. If he were anywhere else, he’d know he was about to go into a fit of anxiousness. “I like these,” he said finally, nodding towards her stockings as he lay them to the side. “Green.”

Odette propped herself up on her elbows, her smile widening.

“Some ‘a the girls were sayin’ they looked stupid. I was just tryin’ to do something a little different. I was gonna get rid of ‘em.”

“I don’t. Think you should, mm.”

He wanted to say something about the natural world, how birds and butterflies and other creatures used color to attract each other. He wanted to say  _you are the brightest thing I’ve seen in years._ Both sounded stupid even in his head, even in the boy’s voice he possessed before. Suddenly there was nothing else to take away. She was lying before him naked as birth, her white skin glowing pallid, almost silver, in the winter light. Richard wanted to bolt. He wanted to run back down all those stairs back to James Darmody’s hard, calming stare and the sting of bourbon until his eye went as warm as his father’s used to. But he also wanted to stay here looking at the exquisite lines that made her up until he magically changed into someone who deserved to have her near. He heard himself softly exclaim:

“ _Oh…”_

He was staring. Somewhere underneath the mist of delight that was coating his brain, he understood how wrong it was, glutting himself the same way strangers on the streets lapped up his ugliness.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, half mouthing it where his throat failed him. He almost asked,  _What’s it like?_

She probably heard it fifty times a day, but her face was the picture of appreciation.  

“Thank you.”

She pressed her leg against his and suddenly his trousers were binding him painfully. Odette glanced down discretely and he flushed, humiliated.

“Oh—oh my, I…Sorry—”

“Baby.” She put her hand on his face and turned it to her. “You need to stop saying that. This is the whole idea, remember?”

This time Richard’s mouth moved without any sound, drunk on where she had the courage to touch.

“So…Any idea what you might want?”

He suddenly felt the deep pressure in his chest and the ache in his throat and feared he might weep. Had a man ever wept at the sight of her? Would she think him pathetic as well as repulsive? Would she hide it all behind her gentle eyes? He could not allow tears, even for all of this. If he cried, he would feel that drowning sensation in his sinuses and would have to come off. The words flooded up inside him.

_Kill me. Strangle me with those green stockings because I want to be dead most days and today I don’t, but I know it’ll be over soon and I’ll go back into my head and I can’t bear the thought. Crush me instead._

Richard took a deep, ragged breath and tried to collect himself.

“I just want to touch you.”

She chuckled, shaking her head.

“God, you’re so sweet. Well it’d be kind of hard to do this without that, wouldn’t it?”

Richard reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. Odette closed her eyes and sighed and he felt her dark eyelashes like butterflies’ feet. When she spoke it sounded like the men in the hospital talking of home in their sleep.

“Not on the lips, okay?”

Richard shook his head, the agreement tumbling out of him.

“No. Of course not. You wouldn’t want to—”

She seemed to realize what he was thinking as he thought it. She placed a hand on his arms and rushed to correct him.

“No, no, no, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s one a’the rules. For everybody. Come here.”

She moved away from his side and came around to face him, then sat astride his legs as he watched, awestruck. He started to sputter out her name but once she laid the living side of his face against her shoulder it broke apart into a shuddering, dry sob. He was touching her silken hair and could feel her breasts pressing through the cheap, threadbare fabric of his shirt. Finally his hands came to press against the small of her back, hugging her close, wanting to keep her safe in those hands that had taken the soul from so many bodies so much bigger and stronger than her little garden of bones.

“Oh God…” It wasn’t something he said often, first out of respect and afterwards out of a desire not to waste breath on anything that no longer felt true, but he heard his own voice croaking it all the same. “ _Oh God_.”

“It’s  _okay_ , baby.”

“No,” he choked out. “No you don’t. Understand. This doesn’t. Happen—hngh—anymore. Not to me. People don’t—tch—touch me. Mm, not even the doctors. Not even. Strangers here, they just…part…move away from me and stare. Hmm. They think that…I don’t know. What they think…I just…It’s important. Mm, to be touched. Isn’t it. Odette? It lets you know that. You’re alive.”

She rocked him slightly, backwards and forwards. She hummed deeply in agreement and he felt it.

“Mm hmm. You’re right, it is really important. But y’know what? That’s why gals like me do what we do, to touch you in all the best, right places. That’s what this place is all about. When you come to a pleasure house anything that you wanna be real is. So what d’you want to be, huh?”

She was stroking his hair and down to the back of his neck. Richard thought. He could feel beauty marks scattered across her back.

“I want to be whole.” He was grateful the sentence emerged without hum, click, or pause. “I don’t, mm, want to be like this. Anymore. I don’t want to be. Weird. I can’t help it—tch. I used to be someone else—someone better. I want to sleep. Without a gun. Without—hngh—horrible. Horrible dreams.” He stopped short. “None of that is. Your concern, mm. I only, mm, want you to know that I. Haven’t always been like this.”

“Well,” she replied, chuckling quietly. “I haven’t always been like this. People change.”

She took one of her hands from around his body and wound it around the front, undoing the buttons of his vest, pulling down his suspenders, and casting his shirt to the side as she spoke. Richard tried to relax and listen. “We’ve been gettin’ a lot more doughboys in the last couple years. Some hurt, some not, but all of ‘em seem pretty lonely t’me. Not at first, always, but soon enough I can see it. Even with Jimmy. They can’t’ve all been like that before fightin’.”

“Have you. Helped many of them. Like you have me? Tch.”

“My share.”

She undid the buttons of his union suit but, obviously, couldn’t pull it down. When her mouth went to the skin of his chest he threw his head back and groaned through his teeth. She left a trail of barely-there kisses around his nipples that stole the air from his lungs and revived the hardness. Odette knew things about his body that he had never even thought of. He was lulled into a half-dream as she trailed over his collarbones and up the side of his neck.

“Odette. Odette, hmm, I’m frightened.”

“Don’t even worry ‘bout it.” She was pushing him, hand over his pounding heart. “Try and relax.”

She inhaled, held it, exhaled slowly. He did his best to follow, managing to get out:

“Hngh. I can’t. Lay back. The, mm, mask—I can’t. Pressure—”

The prism-light eyes suddenly clouded. The smearing rose of her mouth went small.

“Hurts ya, huh?” Her voice was tinged with a roughness he hadn’t yet heard. She looked into his eye. “We could take it off; I won’t mind.”

He sighed brokenly. He wanted to, that was the worst of it. It was too hot and smelled like pennies in a clenched fist. She had said she had seen soldiers…Had there been any like him? Could she really hold her own tinted mask of generosity in place long enough to service him? Was it even worth it to care what she thought?

He tangled his fingers in her curly hair, wanting to remove the rhinestone comb so he could have it all around him.

“It’ll spoil everything,” he mumbled. Odette looked at him with that sad face for another moment, then leaned forward and pushed her nose into his cheek like a foal.

“Okay, baby, you got it.”

She moved from his embrace, taking his wrists in her hands and placing his palms against her hipbones. He couldn’t feel them through her skin like he always could Emma’s as they pressed together in sleep. Then all of a sudden she shifted and, with a strangled cry, Richard was inside her. That was how easy it was and now she was a warm room; a honeyed beehive cell. She moaned, grinned at the way his mouth dropped open, allowed him a minute to accustom himself to the glory, the  _connection_ between them _._

“Is it—tch—all right?” he rasped, trying not to place the tin against her ear. “Does it. Hurt you? You’ll. Let me know if it does? Hmm.”

“Shh.” She drew back, putting a finger to his lips. “You’re so sweet, aren’t you? Sweet soldier boy.”

Then she began to revolve her hips against him, slowly at first, then raising her arms up above her head and using her whole upper body like a dance. She played it like an instrument, like her form was something separate from herself. All the time her eyes were locked on his. Richard kept her anchored. Soon, without realizing it, he began to move against her, watching, desperately trying to commit every detail to memory—the way she bit her lip, the way she growled at the back of her throat, the sweat glistening between her breasts as they moved. All this, amidst the sea of pleasure that rolled backwards and forwards through his body, he tried to keep and understand, but he couldn’t drown out the terrible sounds of his own voice, half metal half animal, grunts and snarls and the exposure of teeth.

“Please. Odette.” He didn’t know what he was asking her for, but his brain latched onto the word and kept throwing it out of him in rhythm with their strides. “Please…oh, please…please…please.”

She kissed his neck and the side of his face to quiet him, but when she found the scar that sliced across his throat, leaned in, and  _licked_  it, Richard felt every nerve in his body contract and loosen like a trigger. He let out a gasping moan and at the same moment Odette wrapped him tightly in her arms and said his name in a serious, breathless tone like a prayer, holding him in space before he collapsed into her. Again, the thought rose up:

_Please let me die._

He heard this echoing in his ears. He became conscious of his body by degrees—the heat on one side of his face, the thin layer of sweat on his back, his hair falling against his temple, his legs trembling. Another muffled voice crashed and blended in with his like static, until finally his senses cleared and he could make her out, saying over and over:

“No, no, I’m not gonna let you fall, baby. I’m not gonna let you fall. I got you. I got you.”

Richard realized then that he had been talking—like he did in sleep, like a mad man. He took a deep breath, gasping for air.

“Thank you…” he said into her shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you so very much.”

She rubbed his back as his limbs slackened. Suddenly his head felt like concrete. He wanted to lift it. He knew the mask would hurt against her skin. He wanted to take the mask and throw it across the room, but he couldn’t even find the strength to wipe his forehead. He heard his tongue make a strange, infantile sound as it lolled in his desert-dry mouth.

“You’re tired now, aren’t yah, baby?”

Tired was not the appropriate term. Tired was every minute of every day except when he had been pulling the trigger. Richard wanted morphine and his childhood dog. He nodded anyway.

“I just. Tch. Need a minute. Please.”

“We got time.”

Odette ran her fingers through his hair; he sighed. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, let her hair fall over his eye. When he breathed in, her scent hit him so hard a rock formed in his throat.

“Hmm. That’s lavender.”

“Like it? It was my mother’s; I took it when I left home.”

He felt the tears welling up again but forced them back with an effort.

“That’s. How my house. Used to smell. Hmm, my mother grew it. In the crawlspace under our porch. She loved it.”

“We grew it in the window box!” Odette cried, drawing back to look at him, moving her hair from her face. “Did she burn it in your room when you were sick? My daddy had to keep bribing our landlady not to evict us because Ma was always trying to do it in our tiny apartment with the windows open.”

“Yes.” Richard hiccupped through his ribs. The silent breaths that emerged, he realized, must have been what laughter would be now. He hadn’t wanted to laugh since…he couldn’t remember. “She called it. Clearing the vapors—mm. My sister’n I. Used to laugh at her because it sounded. Like something from some novel from. A hundred years ago. But then those were the. Hmm, only books she read.”

“Mine said it would get rid’a my bad temper—what she called my ‘sulks.’”

“I think it, mm, must’ve worked,” Richard smiled bashfully.

“Well, now I can’t smell it without gettin’ happy, so I guess maybe it did.”

There was a pause. Richard was slipping back into his half-conscious state. He felt Odette move away. She lifted his legs onto the bed. His head and shoulders hit three satin pillows, stacked on each other so he would recline.

“You’re so good…” he heard himself mutter. He was sure exhaustion was making him even more incomprehensible, but then he felt the pressure of her body next to him. When he opened his eyes, she was lying beside him. She took his face and kissed the scar above his eye. Richard breathed it in again; his mother’s scent, Odette’s scent, lavender and sweat, womanliness and hard work.

“So’re you, baby,” she said. “It’s gonna get better for you, I promise. It’s just gotta.”

She was wrong, but maybe not about both of those. Today had been a good day. Maybe there would be more good days. And if there weren’t, he’d always have this one. She got up again. He heard the sound of water, tried to open his eye, saw the blurred outline of her washing herself from a basin with a sponge. If he had not been so spent, the sight would have aroused him. Odette sat beside him and put the lovely stockings back on.

“Listen,” she said, “I gotta go back down in a few minutes, so ya can’t rest here. I’m sorry.”

He was too happy it had happened to be sad it was ending.

“I’ll go,” he mumbled, eye still closed, making no move to do so.

“But if y’want, Jimmy’s room is right next door. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind ya sleepin’ in there for a while.”

“Jimmy…” Almost like a dream Richard saw the almost colorless, bloodshot eyes, the heedless smile, the blue-veined, pallid hands lighting a cigarette. Jimmy wasn’t only whole, but handsome—like Odette, perfectly formed and so kind wanting to speak to him. And he was waiting downstairs for Richard right now, still wanting to talk some more; waiting until just after Richard had rested a little. He just needed to take his mask off for a few moments. Jimmy would understand. “He won’t mind…?”

“I’m sure not. He’s gotta report to our boss anyway, prob’ly. Come on.” She pulled him to his feet. Richard mumbled something about his clothes. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I got you. Absolutely.”

Later, he would be ashamed that he had been walking about with her in his underwear and Jimmy would laugh low in his throat and that would be the beginning of something. Now, however, he just let her lead him into another room, knowing he would have to let go of her hand soon. When he sat down on the bed and looked up, trying to make the most of this time in his life, a thought suddenly struck him. He paled.

“Odette,” he choked out. There was no way to ask this that did not make him feel like he was throwing mud in her face. “I don’t really have…That is—hngh…Whatever it is, it won’t be. Enough but…How, mm, much--?”

Odette knelt down and rubbed the backs of his hands. They were clenching and unclenching again and only then did he realize that she had actually made them stop.

 “Shush,” she ordered. “Don’t worry your silly head; Jimmy’n me are gonna work it all out between us. He told me not t’let ya fuss.”

Richard shook his head.

“I can’t. Let. Him do that. Why should, mm, he do it? Tch.”

“Well you’re ‘is friend, aren’t’cha?” she replied. “Ya fought together. Isn’t that how you all are? Band ‘a brothers an’ all that stuff?”

Richard swallowed past the lump in his throat. For the second time that day, the second time since who knew when, he told a lie.

“Yeah. We did.”

It didn’t have to be a lie forever. He wouldn’t let it be. Odette nodded smartly.

“Well okay then. So you hush now an’ get some sleep. I’ll leave ya to it.”

She touched his hair one last time before getting up. Richard wanted to reach for her arm, but it felt wrong now to touch her with the time up, especially on another man’s charity.

“Odette?”

“Mm hmm?”

“Is there something. Maybe that I could do. For you? Not, hmm, money but. Tch. Something else. You, mm, might need?”

For an instant, a stunned expression played across her face and he was afraid he might have offended her, but she shook her head and smiled, sighing a little as she answered:

“No. No, baby, there’s nothing. But thank you all the same. That’s…nobody’s ever said anythin’ like that t’me before.”

“I’ll never. Tch. Be able to thank you. Enough,” he said. “I won’t, hngh, ever forget you.”

Her smile changed in a way he could not describe.

“There’ll be another girl. A nice one for ya.”

“I don’t. Expect so. Hmm. But if you ever need. Anything. Anything, mm, at all. Tell Jimmy and. He’ll tell me. And I’ll do it.”

She made a strange sound, like a laugh and something sadder caught in a trap. He knew he must’ve sounded like a fool but he had to say it.

“Don’t’cha worry about me,” she said breezily. “I’m a big tough girl. Tie my own shoelaces an’ everything. Now you take a nap. I really gotta go. Only good dreams tonight, okay?”

She turned in the doorway, her robe like crushed butterfly wings. She blew him a kiss and was gone. Richard sat there for a long time, breathing deeply. Then he got up from the bed, shut the door, and locked it. He took his mask off and collapsed into sleep.   

Downstairs, Jimmy raised his eyes as the colors came into view. Odette looked just as she had before, no hair out of place, lipstick and perfume fresh, and no sign of Richard.

“He’s tuckered out,” she headed him off, approaching the bar. “I let ‘im cop a few nods in your room. Whiskey,” he shot at the barman. “Double.”

“That bad?” Jimmy asked nervously. Odette knocked back her drink and sat still for a moment, hand on her forehead. Her voice was hoarse.

“Jesus, Jim,” she muttered. “What the Hell kinda justice is that, huh? That poor boy…He was so…” She made a frustrated gesture with both hands. “How’d a kid like that even survive a goddamn war? An’ now look at ‘im…S’not fuckin’ fair.”

Jimmy rubbed his mouth with his palm.

“He said he’s from Wisconsin,” he told her after a beat. Odette stared at him, then abruptly turned.

“Gimmie another.”

Jimmy watched her drink it, shaking out her shoulders as it hit.

“I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about ‘er,” she whispered, not looking at him. “All I could do not t’tell ‘im the whole story right there.”

“He also said he can put a bullet in a fella’s head from seven hundred yards away.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “This mornin’, Al an’ me got word the last one stuck his head out. The one who held the knife.”

He watched it come together on her face. Her eyes snapped to meet his.

“He’s sleepin’ in her bed right now.” She let out a deflated laugh. “Fuck, Jimmy.”

“You were sore at me because Grace got t’be there when we took Greektown, remember? You said it shoulda been you. Well…here’s that justice y’wanted.”

Odette stared at him for another minute, shaking her head, a smile on her open mouth. Then she hopped off the barstool.

“This is why you got into college,” she said.

Jimmy put his hand in the small of her back and pushed her gently in the direction of a table where four of her regulars sat. He turned back to the bar, glancing at the black bag on the seat next to him, and heard them chant her name as she greeted them.

_she swallows my ghosts._  
  
Slaps me on my dark side and says,  
"Baby, this is the best day ever."  
So I stop listening for the sound of the ocean  
in the shells of bullets I hoped missed us  
to see there are white flags from the tips of her toes  
to her tear ducts

 

_from “Pole Dancer” by Andrea Gibson_

 


End file.
